An investigation into how Tennessee judges are disciplined reveals less than 1 percent of complaints against judges over the past decade has led to public reprimand. In addition, most of the reprimands are done privately, even though most judges are elected officials.
Clint Brewer of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research used Tennessee's Open Records Act to obtain every formal complaint against a Tennessee judge in the past decade, and while there were nearly 3,000 complaints against Tennessee judges, those judges were only publicly reprimanded 23 times.
"It's probably a shock for the average person not only how infrequently actions are taken against judges but also how little of that information is open to the public," said Brewer. "You can't get the record on most of these cases. It's not open to the public."
Don Ash is the presiding judge of the Court of the Judiciary, the body that investigates complaints against judges. While the group publicly reprimanded judges 23 times, they privately reprimanded judges 100 times. But what they said, did and demanded are all secret.
"They're accountable to the voters, and their record should be open to the voters," said Brewer.
Tennessee has not impeached a judge in 50 years and hasn't removed a judge in 16 years.
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Investigation Reveals Lack of Judicial Discipline
10 comments:
It is high time these judges take a bit of public heat. I love it !!
On a local newspaper blog sometime back I posted that I though too much focus at election time is given to mayors and governors ... no one is paying attention to who gets elected judge ... where law is actually made.
Read the dissenting opinion of Supreme Court Justices, Stuart, Powell and Blackman -- in "Stump v. Sparkman" [SCOTUS 1978] Google this, it is an easy find.
I filed 4 judicial misconduct complaints just yesterday --
Thanks for the news reports NASGA -- I will put these articles and the info to very good use.
I too am glad to see some heat on the judicial discipline system.
Long overdue!
Four complaints yesterday timlahrman? Good for you!
This lack of judicial discipline is a strong message that the judges and lawyers run the world.
Complaints against judges should be open and public, so the public is fully informed when they go to the election booth.
I think the overall problem is most of the world is naive. They think judges are of higher moral standards and ethics ... almost non-human.
And because most people think this way, the judicial disipline committees get by with their veil of secrecy.
We shouldn't let them.
The committees themselves should be looked at for balance. In addition to the legal professionals represented as panel members, there should be "joe american" to balance the panel.
23 out of 3,000? Well, that's pretty good score for such a bum outfit - 0.76666%.
Judging the judges should be done by the people who get sucked into voting for the bums, without knowing who's who and what's what.
Good show, Tim Lahrman!
File, file, file those complaints; pile 'em up!
Fill up their folders.
Let's fimd out what the magic number is.
It's the same old, same old everywhere - no accountability for judges. For anyone engaging in the futile practice of filing complaints, be sure to follow your state's Canons of Judicial Ethics.
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